PC Gone Too Far

No one said or implied that Lincoln's words are "non arguable". Lincoln wasn't quoted as if to say, "Lincoln said it, I believe it, that ends it." Lincoln was quoted because he said things very similar to what I've been saying, only better. I wasn't trying to end an argument but begin one, because the points about human nature have been given little consideration. I thought perhaps it might be because I hadn't expressed myself well enough, so I quoted Lincoln. I was also hoping it would lend the view a little greater credibility that might merit it some increased attention, but if people don't think Lincoln actually believed what he said then it isn't worth arguing about because it's even further from the topic.Submitted for consideration: Southern views developed out their unique circumstances. Born and raised in a slave economy, they naturally believed slavery was right and natural. Anyone born into their circumstances would be subject to the same influences and turn out the same.But reading ahead it seems unlikely there will be any sincere discussion of what is in reality self-evident. Your dialogue with Xongsmith ends (as of right now) at Message 553 with you declaring, "Apparently I do get it. I just don't find the argument compelling," followed by rhetorical dismissals and more misstatements of what I've said.I don't understand why the continual misstatements of what other people say. What is the value of rebutting things not said, unless to act as a distraction? The more accurately and powerfully you summarize your opponent's position the greater the value of a successful rebuttal.--Percy

Quite possibly. Almost certainly what was reported in the article you cited was what some folks wrote in response to attacks by the abolitionists and not polls of southerners. So yeah, those reasons were invented of necessity born from the truth based insults of abolitionists.Percy, according to the article you posted, prior to 1830, the South appreciated that slavery was evil. Quite unsurprising, given that such a conclusion was correct. Somehow after 400 years of enslaving folks despite that being evil prior to 1830, the South figured out in 1830 that they had been wrong all along, and that slavery was actually beneficial to Africans? The article you quoted indicated that the new thinking was a response to attacks by abolitionists and Northerners? What else changed other than the South having their nosed rubbed into what they were doing by their rivals? Was their actually some quantum level betterment in the way slaves were being treated? Was there some new evidence or facts that suggested that slaves were just peachy?Under that set of facts, you don't think a suspicion that the the new thinking is more rationalizing that truth is at least plausible? Because among the possible explanations, rationalizing makes more sense to me.No I don't take everything folks say at face value nor do I believe it is impossible that folks can come to believe something despite the facts. Isn't that actually somewhat close to the point of that other thread of yours? As at least one poster put it, sometimes it is the presentation of facts that drives folks away from the truth.After the civil war, the South actually denied that the war had been about slavery at all, despite the writing of their leaders who explained explicitly why they formed the Confederacy. Those same 'historians' continued to spread stories about how satisfied slaves were under slavery in the face of extremely available evidence to the contrary. So, yeah, the truth does turn out to be something other than what Lost Cause historians say it is. The reference you provided says something completely different; namely that prior to 1830, Southerners acknowledged the evil in slavery but practiced it anyway. So apparently, belief that slavery was right was not something they 'naturally believed' apparently that belief was acquired over time. And after a substantial time of exploiting slavery.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You have a knack for the irrelevant, or maybe it's a "flow of consciousness" kind of thing.The point you made was...well, now with all the inconsistencies I don't think I could state your point clearly, or maybe your goal now is to confuse your own point. As near as I can recall, these are the points you've made:

• "Slavery IS genocide."
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  You made no attempts at equivocation. You've repeated your claims that slavery and genocide are the same thing many times.
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• "Genocide" and "cultural genocide" are the same thing.
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  You've many times repeated your assertions that one need only say "genocide" when one actually means "cultural genocide," presumably as justification for your claim that "Slavery IS genocide," when what you actually mean is that "Slavery IS cultural genocide," which isn't true either.
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• In Canada it is widely understood that what happened to their native aborigines was genocide.
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  This view turns out to be a subject of great interest and discussion in Canada - there's no consensus.

Independent of your assaults on language, slavery and genocide are not the same thing. We all agree slavery is wrong, there's no need to emphasize it through characterizations so overdramatic that they're untrue.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

The reference you cited discussed the views of Southerners before and after 1830 or 1840. Are you saying that you disagree with the reference you cited or that I did not properly characterize the reference you provided? If the latter, then I disagree.If you are not adopting the statements in that reference, then where is the support for your position that most Southerners considered slavery to be a blessing? At the very least, your own reference suggests a long period of Southerners accepting that slavery was evil but necessary.

Meaning what? Lincoln was cited as saying something that has been in contention for a large portion of this thread. Other than the fact that Lincoln said it, what else should I take from your quotation of Lincoln. And why are attempts to show that Lincoln's position seems to have produced some unfortunate consequences not a proper argument.I don't care how eloquently the idea is expressed. If the idea is wrong it is still wrong.

Because evil is the wrong standard for which parts of history to preserve.My beliefs differ somewhat from your characterization. I don't want to commemorate evil people. I want to preserve history. A 120-year old monument is part of history. If you really believe that the most common thoughts brought to mind by that monument are that slavery and Southerners were evil, and you truly don't want that forgotten, then you really want that monument to be displayed prominently for as long as possible.The other point of difference with your characterization, and I know you put "agree" in quotation marks, is that it nonetheless implies I accept modern judgments of evil as historically meaningful. I've said many times that judging historical peoples along some modern scale from evil to good makes no sense. Naturally we disagree about the meaning of the monument, but again, if its meaning truly is that these people committed "crimes against humanity" (which are obviously wrong) and that other people actually built monuments to them (also wrong), don't you want those facts remembered so that such mistakes aren't repeated? The monument isn't a glorification of slavery and of the people who fought for it, but a record and reminder of the mistakes people make. I think your desires oppose your goals. Here I was speaking much more generally than just about the monument. It's the same question I asked NoNukes: How does one demand action based on one's own judgments of evil, say about Southerners, while rejecting others' demands for action based upon their own judgments of evil, say about abortion and homosexuality.The answer is not to argue about what's evil and what's not but to realize that evil is not the right standard. It's moralistic, subjective, inconstant, relative.--Percy

The intent doesn't matter. You can wipe out an entire culture accidentally by introducing smallpox, for example. The slaves did try to preserve as much of their culture as possible but they were not free to do so. No more than efforts to kill off the Mafia culture.

No we don't. You're trying to minimize the unspeakable evil of slavery by downgrading it to "wrong". To you it's just a little oopsie, like a wrong number. To you its practitioners are heroes worthy of commemoration.No, we don't agree. We need to call a spade a spade or we're not remembering history.

Ringo writes: Evidence please that Percy ever said this.Heroes? Where?
Commemoration? Where?I call you "busted".

No. I would like it to be replaced by a monument to the slaves. That would be remembering history as it was instead of whitewashing it. And I've said that it's the only way that makes sense, so quit pretending that we agree. The facts can be remembered by commemorating the victims instead of the perpetrators. They will be repeated unless we remember which side was "wrong". It's not an individual decision. It's a collective decision by society. Our society has decided to accept abortion and homosexuality and reject slavery. Some future society may decide we were evil and ban abortion and homosexuality and re-introduce slavery. You, of course, would want to decide "objectively" whether or not slavery was a good idea.

Commemorated by the monument.

Ringo continues: From the OP, Percy writes: Note that he does not mention heroes or use term "commemoration". You will note that it is possible to mention such a monument without agreeing with what the Confederate powers were brainwashing their soldiers about.again from the OP: Your argument seems to be that there is no way the Southern soldiers could have died as honorably as the Northern soldiers - is it? Basically ALL soldiers are brainwashed into serving their military leaders. In fact even today it's brutal - basic training to dehumanize, the drill sergeant barking out humiliating putdowns, saying that his job is to turn his recruits into Weapons - and that's just here in 2016 USA.Weren't the leaders of the North military evil as well?Would it be any different for you if they put up a plaque on front saying things like "NEVER AGAIN!" and things like "NEVER FORGET THE CRIMES FROM THE CONFEDERATE POWERS THAT SENT THESE MEN TO THEIR DEATHS!".

Intent is central to the concept of genocide. That's why the enormous amount of Amerindian smallpox deaths aren't regarded as genocide.You've been using the word genocide without knowing its meaning. It has to be deliberate.

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Dictionary.com

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genocide

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noun:
the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.

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All groups arriving in the Americas underwent cultural change. The slaves retained as much or more than some others. The fact of segregation may have helped to retain aspects that related to western Africa. Would the intentional and forceful behaviour of the Union in killing off the southern slave culture or the Mafia culture constitute an act of "cuturecide" or "cultural genocide" in your view?Edited by bluegenes, : No reason given.

I think this is just a bit too glib.Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide? | History News Network

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Unfortunately for this thesis, we know of but a single instance of such warfare, and the documentary evidence is inconclusive. In 1763, a particularly serious uprising threatened the British garrisons west of the Allegheny mountains. Worried about his limited resources, and disgusted by what he saw as the Indians’ treacherous and savage modes of warfare, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, wrote as follows to Colonel Henry Bouquet at Fort Pitt:"You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians [with smallpox] by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method, that can serve to extirpate this execrable race."

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Yes it is true that there are not many documented cases of attempts to use smallpox deliberately. But this article suggests that the question of whether the fate of the Native Americans can be described as genocide is not an easy question. Primarily this material is not helpful in making the case that slavery is genocide, or even to instruct on making a comparision of the two. But I hope it does put to rest that the idea of what was specifically intended is a simple dividing line between genocide, and simply killing off a bunch of folk. Ultimately this article comes down on the side of not considering the death of so many Native American's as genocide in most cases, but not as simply as you do it here.Another article poses this question:http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/...ore-9780199329175-e-3

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Scholars have begun referring to Indian removal as ethnic cleansing, a term whose aptness seems incontestable. But was it genocide?

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If in fact, "ethnic cleansing" is the better term for legal reasons, that would seem to be to be only a slightly less charged accusation than genocide. Which I think gets to my point. I don't think the comparison of slavery to genocide is very illuminating regardless of your position on whether it is appropriate to label slavery or enslaving folks as evil. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : add a second reference.

When it comes to which items of history to preserve, why should they matter at all? Shouldn't we preserve both the good and the bad of history? A good many members of every generation understand that this is not a good reason for editing history. And that you understand that feelings change over time underscores the importance of letting objective principles like historical preservation override capricious feelings. That you can look upon a statue of Julius Caesar (sold all of Gaul into slavery) and not feel the same things as when you look upon the Louisville monument tells us that something other than objectivity is going on. Not judging the South evil is not ignoring history. It's understanding that inconstant moralistic feelings are not the right standard. It's how people of the period felt that is relevant.--Percy